Feds concede new management plan is inadequate
||| FROM EMMA HELVERSON for WILD FISH CONSERVANCY |||
Wild salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River Basin are collapsing, and endangered orcas that depend on them are starving — yet the federal government continues to fund hatchery operations that fuel their decline. After years of warnings and repeated Endangered Species Act (ESA) violations, Wild Fish Conservancy (WFC) and The Conservation Angler (TCA) have filed a new
federal lawsuit challenging NOAA Fisheries for once again failing to protect these species from ongoing harm caused by Columbia River hatcheries.
Under the ESA, NOAA must issue a Biological Opinion (BiOp) for any action it authorizes or funds that may affect listed species, determining the extent of the harm and requiring the protections needed to ensure the action is not likely to push those species closer to extinction. The new lawsuit challenges a new BiOp NOAA issued in December 2024, which attempts to justify continued Mitchell Act hatchery operations despite fundamental scientific and legal deficiencies that violate the ESA and fail to safeguard
the Columbia River’s protected salmon and steelhead.
In a stunning last-minute admission, NOAA informed the groups on the eve of this filing that its newly issued 2024 BiOp requires “clarification” and will already need to be reissued. This acknowledgement underscores the urgency of the legal action, as NOAA has for more than a decade, allowed harmful hatchery operations to move forward under ESA reviews that do not meet scientific or legal standards, while continuing to direct tens of millions in federal funding to programs it knows are operating without
a valid protective plan.
“It’s hard to imagine a clearer sign that NOAA is not doing its job,” said John McMillan, President and Lead Scientist for The Conservation Angler. “This latest plan downplays risk, glosses over missing science, and assumes wild steelhead and salmon can withstand more harm than they actually can. NOAA keeps rewriting the paperwork while the fish continue to disappear.”
The complaint details the various ways the 2024 BiOp understates well-documented genetic, ecological, and harvest-related impacts that hatchery programs impose on wild populations. It relies on incorrect assessments of wild fish abundance and trends, authorizes levels of harm that cannot be reliably monitored or enforced, and fails to account for the increased fishing pressure—particularly in ocean fisheries—created by releasing millions of hatchery fish. These deficiencies violate core ESA requirements
and prevent the BiOp from serving as the rigorous, transparent review the law demands.
The lawsuit also challenges NOAA’s oversight of the Select Area Fisheries Enhancement (SAFE) hatchery program in the lower Columbia River, which operates under a similarly flawed 2025 BiOp whose impacts compound the harms caused by Mitchell Act hatcheries, and therefore must be evaluated together.
Perhaps most troubling, the 2024 Mitchell Act BiOp continues NOAA’s pattern of shifting timelines and postponing deadlines instead of addressing long-standing problems. Actions NOAA once required to be implemented no later than 2022 are now delayed until as late as 2034—over a decade later—effectively resetting the clock on years of missed obligations. By postponing overdue safeguards yet again, NOAA allows harmful practices to persist as wild fish decline and Southern Resident orcas continue to face chronic prey shortages. This entrenched cycle of delay and ineffective oversight is at the core of this challenge.
This new lawsuit marks the third time in a decade that WFC and TCA have been forced to challenge NOAA’s management of Columbia River hatcheries. In 2024, WFC and TCA sued NOAA Fisheries and state hatchery operators for various violations of the 2017 Mitchell Act and 2021 SAFE BiOps, which included significantly exceeding federally mandated limits designed to prevent harm to wild fish, failing to meet implementation deadlines, and skirting accountability by ignoring legally mandated reporting
requirements. Rather than enforcing those protections, NOAA rushed to review and issue new BiOps for both programs in an effort to restore legal compliance and avoid delays to hatchery funding and fish releases.
“NOAA fast-tracked new plans that sweeps aside documented violations in order to maintain hatchery funding and fish releases, instead of fulfilling their primary duty to protect endangered wild fish and orcas,” said Emma Helverson, Executive Director of Wild Fish Conservancy. “Resetting and delaying the compliance timeline does nothing to address the underlying harm. NOAA is now delaying protections the agency previously said were required to be in place today to ensure the protection of these species into the future. Pushing deadlines out as far as 2034 is an unacceptable setback that would lock in another decade of avoidable harm.”
The 2024 BiOp also ignores analysis of how Columbia River hatcheries drive overharvest in ocean fisheries. Congress created the Mitchell Act in 1938 not as a recovery tool, but in an attempt to produce fish for harvest as mitigation for damage from dams, pollution, and other development in the Columbia Basin. Today these hatcheries release millions of fish that migrate and mix in the ocean with wild fish from rivers coastwide, creating a harvest dilemma in which salmon from threatened and endangered
populations are harvested and killed at unsustainable rates, further undermining recovery.
“If we want more wild fish returning to their home rivers, we need a broader, ongoing conversation about
how hatchery production drives harvest in the ocean,” said Helverson. “Flooding the ocean with hatchery
salmon creates the illusion of abundance that increases harvest pressure on our most imperiled salmon
populations — the fish we can least afford to lose. Meanwhile, under today’s ocean-harvest frameworks
like the Pacific Salmon Treaty, more fish in the ocean simply results in more fish being harvested. We
cannot recover these species without breaking this cycle.”
###
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court of Oregon. The Conservation Angler and Wild Fish
Conservancy are represented by Kampmeier & Knutsen PLLC.
Wild Fish Conservancy is a nonprofit conservation organization headquartered in Washington State and
working from California to Alaska to preserve, protect and restore the northwest’s wild fish and the
ecosystems they depend on, through science, education, and advocacy.
The Conservation Angler fights for the protection of wild Pacific anadromous fish populations and their
watersheds throughout the Pacific Northwest and Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula.
Twenty-Five Years of Delayed Action and Failed Oversight
1999: NOAA Fisheries issues a Biological Opinion (BiOp) for Mitchell Act hatcheries.
2016: Wild Fish Conservancy sues NOAA for relying on the outdated 1999 plan, which ignored modern
science on hatchery risks.
2017: NOAA issues a new Mitchell Act plan with stricter rules and deadlines to reduce harm to wild fish.
2021: NOAA issues a new Select Area Fisheries Enhancement hatchery program BiOp.2024 (January):
WFC and The Conservation Angler notify NOAA of intent to sue because hatchery operators were
violating terms and conditions required by 2017 BiOp— i.e. failing to install protective weirs; exceeding
limits on harm to wild fish; Lawsuit also challenged the 2021 SAFE BiOp
2024 (April): WFC and TCA file a lawsuit to enforce the 2017 protections.
2024 (September): WFC and TCA settle claims against the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife
for their violations under the ESA. Settlement details.
2024 (December): In a rush to avoid the consequences of the lawsuit, NOAA issues two new, and hastily
prepared, Biological Opinions. The new plans attempts to “wipe away” past violations by extending
deadlines and using flawed data.
2025 (April): WFC and TCA voluntarily dismiss 2024 lawsuit and begin review of new Biological
Opinions
2025 (September): WFC and TCA file a Notice of Intent to Sue over the legally deficient 2024 plans.
2025 (November 19): NOAA sends a letter admitting the 2024 Mitchell Act plan is flawed and must be
re-issued.
2025 (November 21): WFC and TCA file current lawsuit to hold the government accountable.
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If not for the incredibly persistent Wild Fish Conservancy and The Conservation Angler the ever-difficult process to protect and restore wild salmonid stocks would already be in the dustbin of Northwest history. The story is unchanged and further from the goals clearly established by the Endangered Species Act with every passing year. Due to high pressure politics and the immense power of recreational and commercial fishing organizations who cynically collaborate with highly flawed policies for huge economic spinoff of more and more anglers spending big to catch fewer and smaller salmon every year. Once again consumptive economics wins out over conservation….the oldest story in NW resource exploitation.
A complete moratorium on off shore cape fisheries for salmon and recreational harvest for chinook and steelhead that may effect endangered stocks is the only answer for any hope of restoration and increased Orca prey and rightful tribal obligations. What is passing for fisheries and hatchery management down there and around here is the definition of insanity. To my fellow anglers around the Islands; Just keep fishing ’em to the bottom!!
“It’s hard to imagine a clearer sign that NOAA is not doing its job,” said John McMillan, President and Lead Scientist for The Conservation Angler. “
Yes, it is indeed a clear sign. It’s a bit like SJC’s code of protecting the environment while at the same time ensuring we continue to support economic vitality… with the two not being compatible. Putting environment and economy together as a guiding element of government does not attain any semblance of balance, with such a mandate only assuring both long-term environmental, (and consequently), economic failure. As NOAA is tasked to “monitor fisheries management, coastal restoration and supporting marine commerce, NOAA’s products and services support economic vitality and affect more than one-third of America’s gross domestic product,” it is no different than the DNR, the USFS, the BLM, SJC, etc.
In other words, NOAA is doing exactly the job that they are designed to do… as such, why would we expect anything else?
“From daily weather forecasts, severe storm warnings, and climate monitoring to fisheries management, coastal restoration and supporting marine commerce, NOAA’s products and services support economic vitality and affect more than one-third of America’s gross domestic product. NOAA’s dedicated scientists use cutting-edge research and high-tech instrumentation to provide citizens, planners, emergency managers and other decision makers with reliable information they need, when they need it.”
NOAA– https://www.noaa.gov/about-our-agency
The federal government funds Columbia River fish hatcheries. The result is a million plus more salmon in the Columbia River than before the lower four Snake River dams were constructed. “Endangered orcas” (has to be the Southern Residents (SRKWs) since most orca populations in the earths seven oceans are doing just fine) are starving? Really? With millions more salmon released in the Columbia River, and some 750,000 annually from Orcas Island’s amazing Long Live the Kings hatchery, which is a hybrid type hatchery where they are released in a series of ponds where they have to learn to eat bugs like wild salmon, except the survival rate is about 100 time greater than wild river salmon because the salmon are not prone as large of temperature fluctuations, floods and as many predators. A chinook salmon with or without an adipose fin tastes the same to an orca, and of course there are more than two dozen other fish species SRKW’s occasionally munch on. Might it be that interbreeding is the SRKW critical population issue since they don’t breed with other orca pods, and reportedly there are only two “fathers” that have been genetically connected to SRKWs (that information is about 2 years old … not aware of any newer data).
So the article states the large increase in hatchery salmon population increase is resulting in larger ocean catches because there are far more salmon, but some of those caught fish are wild salmon. True. That sounds more like a ocean fish management issue, not a fish hatchery issue when millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on decades of hatchery vs. wild fish litigation. The lawyers are the big winners in this decades old fish fight.
If the fish hatcheries were closed, there might be a case for SRKWs starving. The logic that they are starving because there are too many hatchery salmon is a new take on SRKW’s population failing to increase as projected after ending the taking of orcas for various aquariums and the resulting profit in orca shows.
The other major issue is if the hatcheries were closed and the four dams removed (estimated cost now in the $40 BILLION dollar range … nothing better to use the money on … (oh yeah … forgot about planned trips to the moon and Mars) would chinook salmon return to the Snake in any significant number? They haven’t in expected numbers in the Elwha River …now going on 11 years since those dams were removed. Even Snake River fishermen are questioning whether the Snake River would be too warm (68ºF is survival limit) to increase chinook populations with increasing temperatures, more rain and less snowpack … like so many other Northwest U.S. and Canadian rivers that are experiencing declining chinook numbers.
Ocean conditions appear to play a major role in fish return populations, and that’s still largely an unknown, although science work is making some progress of chinook life in the differing annual oceans conditions.
Finally, Hells Canyon is uncomfortably hot in summer months. Awaiting to read a valid science report if water temperatures of the Snake River, if the four dams are removed, are in the temperature zone for revival of past fish runs given the impact of global warming.
Robert, thanks for some very good food for thought. As Lyle Lewis describes with clarity in the recent Salish Current the ESA is about paperwork success for species listed while often being an ecological failure. Breaking ancient webs of evolving ecological relationships through over harvest and immense habitat destruction can never be easily remedied. And the human caused alterations in addition to “natural variation” are belatedly understood while agencies, especially at the state level play with statistical and imperfect numbers applying band aids to spurting arterial wounds in natural world in fear of politics and revenue disruption. A monitored multi year moratorium on harvesting chinook except perhaps by tribes in river interception is the only sane pause. We in the San Juan Islands mixing zone for many stocks would continue to suffer most. Then cranking up hatchery operations compatible with the best available science in terms of process and genetics etc might make a difference in highly restricted future harvest a for all who love salmon, their incredible ecological role and their succulent flesh.
Robert
Thanks for the info in your comment!
We know where the Orcas Hatchery is (can see it from our house) but didn’t realize the scale or history.
https://lltk.org/projects/glenwood-springs-chinook/
I’ve also wondered about the SKRW’s. Has inbreeding and self restriction to a limited geographic area blunted their natural abilities….living in a natural “Sea World?”. A topic for research by one of the groups studying Orcas?
Robert couldn’t be more right! The numbers don’t lie (more salmon now than when dams and hatcheries first went in 1930’s). Climate change is by far the biggest threat to salmon stocks, orcas and the whole ecosystem. Any proposal to diminish the carbon-free hydropower that all of us (yes, you too) rely upon for up to 60% of our electricity, must come with a ready-to-implement / carbon-free replacement for all the lost generation currently provided by the dams. And before you say, “we just need more wind and solar.” Let me remind you that the sun doesn’t shine at night, the wind doesn’t blow every day and batteries with the capacity to store the gigawatts lost from dam removal don’t even exist on the drawing board (forget about the incredible carbon cost of producing batteries on that scale). Unless your proposing free home batteries for every home (the only socially equitable solution), acceptance of daily blackouts or 5 – 10 new nuclear power stations… Then your agenda to breach the dams (and the immediate effect of importing more coal / natural gas generated electricity) will result in an environment that’s worse for us all (orcas included).
I think this quote from Lyle’s article in the Salish Current says it perfectly: “A species maintained indefinitely by artificial intervention is not recovering — it is being kept from disappearing on our watch. Persistence is not survival.”
https://salish-current.org/2025/12/04/the-moral-comfort-of-numbers/